Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/55

 Colonel William C. Preston asked John C. Calhoun to write a report for adoption by the legislature. Calhoun wrote this report, and it was sent to the committee and reported by it to the House for adoption. The legislature was not ready to adopt the report, which was the very embodiment of nullification disguised by a great deal of metaphysical ingenuity, but it adopted instead a set of relatively tame resolutions, and ordered the report to be printed. These, resolutions declared that the tariff acts were unconstitutional and should be resisted, and invited the other states to co-operate with South Carolina in resistance. The resolutions were sent to the several southern governors to be submitted to the state legislatures. Many erroneously took the policy of the Exposition to be that officially approved by the legislature. The authorship of the Exposition was anonymous; Calhoun was as yet behind the scenes, and was not to appear openly as an actor in the nullification episode until he was later forced to do so.

During the next year, 1829, the state was much less agitated over the tariff, because early in the